Two days after threatening to leave the Republican Party and run for the White House in 2016 as an independent because the GOP has "abdicated" on same-sex marriage, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told Newsmax that the GOP would be walking away from him and other voters if it doesn't stand strong on social issues.
"I don’t think the GOP is going to walk away from the entire body of values voters — but if so, then there would likely be no place for me as a voter or candidate," he told Newsmax by email Thursday. "I wouldn’t be leaving them; they’d be leaving us."
In an interview on Tuesday with the American Family Association, Huckabee charged that Republicans have given in on battling gay marriage and other social issues and vowed that it jeopardized his standing with the party, as both a voter and a potential presidential candidate.
"If the Republicans want to lose guys like me, and a whole bunch of still God-fearing, Bible-believing people, go ahead and just abdicate on this issue — and go ahead and say abortion doesn't matter, either," Huckabee told Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, on Wildmon's "Today's Issues" radio show. "Because at that point, you lose me, I'm gone."
"I'll become an independent," Huckabee said. "I'll start finding people that have guts to stand. I'm tired of this."
Huckabee's declaration
came one day after the Supreme Court refused to hear appeals from five states seeking to preserve their bans on gay marriage, clearing the way for a huge expansion in as many as 30 states and the District of Columbia.
The states affected by Monday's action were Wisconsin, Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, and Virginia. State officials had appealed lower court rulings to preserve their bans.
Couples in six other states — Colorado, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wyoming — could get married soon, since those states would be bound by the same appellate rulings that have been on hold. Challenges are pending in 20 other states.
On Thursday, Justice Anthony Kennedy corrected an error that mistakenly blocked the start of same-sex marriages in Nevada. The order had been issued the day before.
Huckabee, 59, who won the Iowa caucuses during his 2008 presidential run, is among several Republicans looking at 2016.
Others eyeing a campaign include Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Marco Rubio of Florida; Rep. Peter King of New York; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Many conservative GOP candidates slammed the Supreme Court's rulings — Cruz vowed to introduce a constitutional amendment that would prevent federal courts or government from voiding state laws on marriage — but others considered the more strategic implications.
"We don't have to agree with the decision, but as long as we're not against it we should be OK," a top aide for a possible GOP contender told
Time magazine.
And Walker, who is in a tough re-election battle, declared after the court's ruling that the fight to prevent same-sex marriage was "over in Wisconsin."
In the AFA interview, Huckabee charged that the GOP "establishment" has waved the "white flag of surrender" on gay marriage. Wildmon co-hosted the interview with Ed Vitigliano, the association’s research director.
"I'm utterly exasperated with Republicans and the so-called leadership of the Republicans who have abdicated on this issue, when if they continue this direction they guarantee they're going to lose every election in the future," Huckabee said. "Guarantee it — and I don't understand why they want to lose.
"A lot of Republicans, particularly in the establishment and those who live on the either 'left coast' or those who live up in the bubbles of New York and Washington, are convinced that if we don't capitulate on the same-sex marriage issue and if we don't raise the white flag of surrender and just accept the inevitable, then we're going to be losers.
"It is the absolute opposite of that," Huckabee said.
To Newsmax on Thursday, Huckabee described same-sex marriage and "the sanctity of life" as "non-negotiable issues of principle" for Republicans.
"If the GOP 'leaders' capitulate on these issues … they will lose voters like me," he said. "When the GOP puts up a candidate that’s moderate on those issues we lose; when we put up a candidate with clarity on those issues, we win."
He said that he was most disturbed at the general tenor among Republicans to the Supreme Court's action on Monday was, essentially, "Well, that's settled."
"Of course, it isn’t," the Fox News host said. "The courts can’t MAKE law.
"Even if one agrees with their ruling, the legislative branch has to pass enabling legislation, and it has to be signed by the chief executive and carried out.
"One branch of the three equal branches doesn’t get to override the two other branches," Huckabee told Newsmax. "Civics 101."
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